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Diablo 3 shutting down auction house in March 2014

Diablo III's auction house may make it very easy to buy all sorts of shiny hats and swords but oh wait no that's awful, the dream of scoring 'phat loot' (as the kids say) is what keeps people coming back to Diablo. Or not, in the case of D3. So it's going. So long! Goodbye. Blizzard is shutting down both the gold and real-money auction houses on March 18, 2014.

Diablo III's auction house may make it very easy to buy all sorts of shiny hats and swords but oh wait no that's awful, the dream of scoring 'phat loot' (as the kids say) is what keeps people coming back to Diablo. Or not, in the case of D3. So it's going. So long! Goodbye. Blizzard is shutting down both the gold and real-money auction houses on March 18, 2014.

"When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades," Blizzard said in today's announcement. "But as we've mentioned on different occasions, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo's core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot."

While Blizzard has planned for a while to encourage farming and lure people away from the auction house, saying only a few weeks ago that it intended to "cut the legs out from" it, the developer now plans to pull the plug. Together with the 'Loot 2.0' item revamp coming alongside the Reaper of Souls expansion, this should make getting fancy shoes a lot more satisfying.

Here's game director Josh Mosqueira and production director John Hight to explain more: